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Blowing snow and blowing dust in Grand Forks ND

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 Day Snow-Fog RGB and Dust RGB images, from 1801 UTC on 26 March to 0001 UTC on 27 March [click to play animated  GIF | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Day Snow-Fog RGB and Dust RGB images (above) dispayed signatures of convective snow showers (shades of white in Day Snow-Fog RGB imagery) and blowing dust (brighter shades of pink in Dust RGB imagery) that created an unusual combination of blowing snow (BLSN) and blowing dust (BLDU) at Grand Forks, North Dakota (KGFK) on 26 March 2024.

GOES-16 Dust RGB images without plots of METAR reports are shown below. In this case, the Gamma values for each RGB component were adjusted in Composite Options, to further enhance the brighter pink appearance of the blowing dust.

GOES-16 Day Dust RGB images (without plots of METAR reports), from 1801 UTC on 26 March to 0001 UTC on 27 March [click to play animated  GIF | MP4]

Strong northerly winds that day were being channeled (and further accelerated) down the Red River Valley (below).

GOES-16 Dust RGB image at 2101 UTC, along with an image of topography [click to enlarge]

The GOES-16 Day Snow-Fog RGB image at 1801 UTC (below) showed that while much of southern and western North Dakota had appreciable snow cover (darker shades of red), snow cover was sparse across the northeastern part of the state (Grand Forks only had a Trace of snow on the ground that morning).

GOES-16 Day Snow-Fog RGB image at 1801 UTC [click to enlarge]

Locations to the north and northwest of Grand Forks lacking snow cover served as a source region for the blowing dust — a toggle between NOAA-20 and Suomi-NPP VIIRS True Color RGB  images from the VIIRS Today site (below) showed the development of elongated dust plumes in that area.

VIIRS True Color RGB images from NOAA-20 and Suomi-NPP, centered over Devils Lake in northeastern North Dakota on 26 March [click to enlarge]

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On the following day, GOES-16 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) displayed numerous long, narrow streaks of fresh snow cover — oriented from north to south — that were produced by the convective snow showers on 26 March. Given that the new snowfall amounts within those narrow streaks were generally light (Grand Forks only reported about 1 inch of new snow), they melted rather quickly.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images, from 1301-1801 UTC on 27 March [click to play MP4 animation]

Categories: GOES-16, NOAA-20, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Suomi NPP, VIIRS, Winter weather